THE BOSTON GLOBE — When it comes to Donald Trump fandom, it’s hard to top 64-year-old Edward X. Young.
It’s hard to miss him, too, at one of the 74 Trump rallies he proudly boasts he’s attended. Awaiting the start of his latest one here on April 13, Young wore a bright green Make America Great Again hat, a Trump T-shirt, a denim jacket festooned with more than a dozen Trump buttons, and a grin framed by his gray moustache and beard.
In Young’s view, the former president can do no wrong. Except when it comes to COVID.
“I think Trump’s biggest mistake — I hate to have him know that I say he made a mistake — was trusting [Dr. Anthony] Fauci,” Young said of the former federal infectious disease expert who’s been vilified by conservatives for promoting COVID shutdowns and vaccines.
But Young said Trump isn’t compounding that mistake by making another one — talking about COVID.
“I don’t think he wants to talk about it,” Young said. “It’s just too controversial.”
The deadly pandemic encompassed a little more than a fifth of Trump’s presidency, but you’d never know it from listening to him on the 2024 campaign trail.
He rarely mentions COVID. When he does, it’s usually a brief comment that the pandemic derailed some of his presidential plans like an untimely speed bump.
Then he’ll complain he doesn’t get enough credit for doing a great job on COVID — an assessment that most public health experts strongly dispute.
Edward X. Young, 64, of Point Pleasant, N.J., and Bode Brewer, 17 of Reading, Pa., posed for a photo as they awaited the start of a rally by former president Donald Trump in Schnecksville, Pa.,, on April 13.
Trump publicly downplayed the threat from the virus in early 2020, a move he told author Bob Woodward was intentional to avoid creating a panic …
